Frederick Alt | |
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Other names | Fred Alt |
Alma mater | |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | |
Doctoral students | Karen M. Frank |
Frederick W. Alt is an American geneticist. He is a member of the Immunology section of the National Academy of Sciences and a Charles A. Janeway Professor of Pediatrics, and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. [1] He is the Director of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the Boston Children's Hospital. [2] He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, since 1987.
Alt completed his undergraduate studies at Brandeis University, graduating in 1971. [3] He then went on to earn a Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University in 1977 while under the research direction of Robert Schimke. He performed his postdoctoral work in David Baltimore's laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [4] From 1982 to 1991 he was on the faculty at Columbia University and then moved to Harvard Medical School. [5]
Alt's research interest is in maintenance of genome stability in cells of the mammalian immunological system, particularly antigen receptor variable region gene assembly in developing B and T lymphocytes, immunoglobulin heavy chain class switch recombination (CSR), and somatic hypermutation in activated mature B lymphocytes. [1]
Alt is the son-in-law of the organic chemist, Koji Nakanishi, who served as Centennial Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Chemistry Department at Columbia University. [6]
Alt is also the father of the chef and food writer, J. Kenji López-Alt. [7]
He has received many awards, this is a select list:
The Cancer Research Institute of New York gives an annual prize in his honor, the Frederick W. Alt Award for New Discoveries in Immunology.
Alt is a member of:
Tak Wah Mak, is a Canadian medical researcher, geneticist, oncologist, and biochemist. He first became widely known for his discovery of the T-cell receptor in 1983 and pioneering work in the genetics of immunology. In 1995, Mak published a landmark paper on the discovery of the function of the immune checkpoint protein CTLA-4, thus opening the path for immunotherapy/checkpoint inhibitors as a means of cancer treatment. Mak is also the founder of Agios Pharmaceuticals, whose lead compound, IDHIFA®, was approved by the FDA for acute myeloid leukemia in August 2017, becoming the first drug specifically targeting cancer metabolism to be used for cancer treatment. He has worked in a variety of areas including biochemistry, immunology, and cancer genetics.
Pamela Jane Bjorkman NAS, AAAS is an American biochemist. She is the David Baltimore Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Her research centers on the study of the three-dimensional structures of proteins related to Class I MHC, or Major Histocompatibility Complex, proteins of the immune system and proteins involved in the immune responses to viruses. Bjorkman is most well known as a pioneer in the field of structural biology.
Leonard Arthur "Len" Herzenberg was an immunologist, geneticist and professor at Stanford University. His contributions to the development of cell biology made it possible to sort viable cells by their specific properties.
Klaus Rajewsky is a German immunologist, renowned for his work on B cells.
Philippa "Pippa" Marrack, FRS is an English immunologist and academic, based in the United States, best known for her research and discoveries pertaining to T cells. Marrack is the Ida and Cecil Green Professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Research at National Jewish Health and a distinguished professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado Denver.
Sir James Learmonth Gowans was a British physician and immunologist. In 1945, while studying medicine at King's College Hospital, he assisted at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a voluntary medical student.
Christopher Carl Goodnow is an immunology researcher and the current executive director of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. He holds the Bill and Patricia Ritchie Foundation Chair and is a Conjoint Professor in the faculty of medicine at UNSW Sydney. He holds dual Australian and US citizenship.
Laurie Hollis Glimcher is an American physician-scientist who was appointed president and CEO of Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in October 2016. She was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.
James Patrick Allison is an American immunologist and Nobel laureate who holds the position of professor and chair of immunology and executive director of immunotherapy platform at the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.
Harvey Cantor is an American immunologist known for his studies of the development and immunological function of T lymphocytes. Cantor is currently the Baruj Benacerraf Professor of Immunology and Microbiology at the Harvard Medical School.
Stephen C. Harrison is professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology, professor of pediatrics, and director of the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics of Harvard Medical School, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine at Boston Children's Hospital, and investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research, established by National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR) and named in honor of Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel laureate and co-founder of NFCR, has been awarded annually since 2006 to outstanding researchers whose scientific achievements have expanded the understanding of cancer and whose vision has moved cancer research in new directions. The Szent-Györgyi Prize honors researchers whose discoveries have made possible new approaches to preventing, diagnosing and/or treating cancer. The Prize recipient is honored at a formal dinner and award ceremony and receives a $25,000 cash prize. In addition, the recipient leads the next "Szent-Györgyi Prize Committee" as honorary chairman.
Max Dale Cooper, is an American immunologist and a professor at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Emory Vaccine Center of Emory University School of Medicine. He is known for characterizing T cells and B cells.
The Cancer Research Institute (CRI) is a US non-profit organization funding cancer research and based in New York City. They were founded in 1953 to develop immunologically-based treatments for cancer, and despite their name are a funding body for research rather than a research institute themselves, working with other institutes and organizations. It was founded by Helen Coley Nauts and Oliver R. Grace with a $2,000 grant from Nelson Rockefeller. CRI was created in honor of Nauts' father, William Coley (1862–1936), an American orthopedic surgeon and a pioneer of cancer immunotherapy. Grounded in Dr. Coley’s pioneering work, the Cancer Research Institute focuses on immunological treatments for cancer, both as a single treatment approach as well as a complement and enhancer to traditional treatments, such as chemotherapy and surgery.
Shimon Sakaguchi is an immunologist and a Distinguished Professor of Osaka University. He is best known for the discovery of regulatory T cells and to describe their role in the immune system. This discovery is used in the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Andrea Ablasser is a German immunologist, who works as a full professor of Life Sciences at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Her research has focused on how the innate immune system is able to recognise virus-infected cells and pathogens.
Mark Morris Davis is an American immunologist. He is the director of and Avery Family Professor of Immunology at the Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection at Stanford University.
Michel C. Nussenzweig is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology at The Rockefeller University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is a member of both the US National Academy of Medicine and the US National Academy of Sciences.
Carl H. June is an American immunologist and oncologist. He is currently the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. He is most well known for his research on T cell therapies for the treatment of several forms of cancers. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Arlene Helen Sharpe is an American immunologist and Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University and Chair of the Department of Immunology at Harvard Medical School. In 2017, she received the Warren Alpert Foundation Prize with Gordon Freeman, Lieping Chen, James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their collective contributions to the pre-clinical foundation and development of immune checkpoint blockade, a novel form of cancer therapy that has transformed the landscape of cancer treatment. She served as the hundredth president of the American Association of Immunologists from 2016 to 2017 and served as an AAI Council member from 2013 to 2016. She is the co-director of the Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
His father, Frederick Alt, is a professor at Harvard Medical School